In the past, meetings have been held on the impact of the Religious Right, race and conservatism, the social significance of the Duke Lacrosse Case, the Right in Europe, and the future of the conservative movement.

The Taft Club has been highly critical of the Republican Party and in August 2007 held a meeting in which speakers discussed the possibility of the conservative movement ending their association with the GOP. The Taft Club has also been a venue for criticism of the Religious Right. In June, Doug Bandow spoke on the Religious Right’s support of reckless, interventionary foreign policy and the Cato Institute‘s Michael Tanner on the Religious Right’s role in the expansion of government.

Most recently, the Taft Club hosted Terrence Jeffrey, Richard Viguerie, Paul Gottfried, and James Antle III who spoke on the prospects for the conservative movement. In a more controversial meeting, the Flemish separatist party the Vlaams Belangdiscussed their opposition to Muslim immigration in Europe. More controversial still, John Derbyshire, Jared Taylor, and Kevin Martin debated the role race should play — if any — in conservatism. Just after the Duke lacrosse case began to unravel, Willaim Anderson, Stacy McCain and Duke graduate student Richard B. Spencer discussed political correctness, prosecutorial misconduct, and the contemporary university.

When some in a crowd of anti-war activists meeting at Democrat National Committee HQ in June, 2005 suggested Israel was behind the 9-11 attacks, DNC Chair Howard Dean was quick to get behind the microphones and denounce them saying: “such statements are nothing but vile, anti-Semitic rhetoric.”

When KKK leader David Duke switched parties to run for Louisiana governor as a Republican in 1991, then-President George H W Bush responded sharply, saying, “When someone asserts the Holocaust never took place, then I don’t believe that person ever deserves one iota of public trust. When someone has so recently endorsed Nazism, it is inconceivable that someone can reasonably aspire to a leadership role in a free society.”